Small | Wire – "My faith is a great weight."

Finding, God, Introductions, Seeking

The Journey Begins

30 July 201831 July 2018 Mike Bevel

I am very close to finding God.

Belief, Bible Study, Finding, God, Jesus, Paul

This Far, But No Farther: Paul’s Radical Ecumenism in Galatians 3:28

2 June 2021 Mike Bevel

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:28)

Belief, Gnostics, God, Gospels, Jesus, John, Luke, Mark, Matthew, New Testament

The Bible we have is a book in one volume, and so we read it as if it's a book in one volume. But it's really a whole bunch of books, and gospels, and pieces of poems, like a Lutheran hot dish, which is why we have Protestantism.

Uncategorized

“we medicate the mysterious, and in relieving suffering, take its meaning away”

18 May 2021 Mike Bevel

The truth, in many cases, doesn't matter. What matters is what is believed.

Belief, Christ, Finding, God, Jesus

What Happens When the Wire Snaps?

30 July 2020 Mike Bevel

What kept nagging at me -- after the rush of religion and feeling like I had found a church and a faith I could work into my own belief system -- was the ultimate question of the Divinity of Jesus.

Belief, God, Parables, Seeking, Souls

Some Unorganized Thoughts About Riots and Race

7 June 20207 June 2020 Mike Bevel

We can't say that all lives matter until we start treating all lives as if they all mattered. As if each was the most precious resource we have. As if losing one of us is losing all of us. “Oh,” a professor says in the play W;t, “it’s an allegory of the soul!” And it is.

Interludes, Seeking

Interlude: Monologue for a Gay Man

12 March 2020 Mike Bevel

[Spotlight on an empty stage. A gay man in his late 40s walks up to the microphone.]

Belief, Bible Study, Christ, Gospels, Mark, Matthew, New Testament

What Happens When Jesus is Racist?: The Syrophoenician Woman

11 March 202011 March 2020 Mike Bevel

We are spoiled for choice when it comes to reckoning with Jesus of Nazareth. For atheists, he was just another Jewish apocalyptic preacher. (I think there was a time when "Did Jesus exist?" made the rounds as a question and almost all historians of the Ancient Near East (ANE) agree that a man named Jesus actually existed; the miracle stories they leave to theology.) For believers, that flow chart branches a lot. Was he wholly divine? Was he wholly human? Was he both? Was Jesus also God, or was Jesus next to God? Your New Testament will be no help on this by the way.